


Sandcastles

by longkissgnite



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Semi graphic descriptions of blood, annie’s just a bit silly she’s trying, i headcanon Annie’s first name as annalisa because I hate suzanne collins, its due to hallucinations not because of injury, the Capitol works hard to break these kids but Mags works harder to protect them, vague mention of forced prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25828849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longkissgnite/pseuds/longkissgnite
Summary: She hated things destined to break, which is probably why she’s had such a hard time with liking herself since she won.
Relationships: Finnick Odair/Annie Cresta (vaguely mentioned)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 10





	Sandcastles

Annie grabbed a fistful of sand, throwing it into the pile she was making. It wasn’t a sandcastle, it couldn’t be one. She hated them, she hated the certainty of them breaking, what good did it do for them to exist?  
It was a day that she had to be alone again.  
Annie sat in the sand, on the /private/ beach for the victors. She couldn’t trust herself to go so far as to her hiding spot on the other side of the small district. Maybe she /could/, maybe it’d be /good/ to start trusting herself more again, but she couldn’t actually get there. How could she trust herself when she was so horrified by the most peaceful thing in the world, in her home.  
She sat closer to the water than she had while alone since she came home (which wasn’t saying much, she pretty much has avoided the beach for the last eighteen months), normally she had Finnick with her, maybe Mags.  
Right now, Finnick was in the Capitol, he seemed to be more and more, and now she understands why. It /broke/ her heart, knowing he was so far away for such /disgusting/ reasons. Knowing the Capitol, who she’d never doubted, was so cruel to him. How could anyone do that? At all, or course, but especially to him. How could anyone look at him, and want to hurt him, especially how they did. Annie of course wanted him close, to hold him, but she realized how she wanted him was so /pure/ compared to the cruelty of the Capitol.  
She’d always known her views on things were different, gentler, but where did this stop? Why was she always so /weak/? How could she continue to let herself stay useless and weak.  
She had won a year and a half ago, a whole new victor had won by now and soon would be taking on the tour of the districts. She hadn’t watched the games, she had no idea who won, where they were from, or anything. She wanted nothing to do with the games, already avoiding them before her victory, now being /sure/ to do so. She hated the violence, the blood.  
The blood.  
She buried her hands in the sand, slightly stiff from an earlier high tide. She could feel it anyway, she could feel how /hot/ it was, it burned her skin even with the soothing sand. Blood. She wasn’t bleeding, no, this was someone else’s.  
It wasn’t real, but she had yet to get to a point where she could distinguish this. Annie was still struggling with realizing the larger things weren’t real, the small details get impossible. Like now, she didn’t even consider the possibility that this wasn’t real, she believed it wholeheartedly and started to panic.  
When she was younger, she built one single sandcastle. It was beautiful, she thought, large, tall, too close to the water. It soon was swept away as the tide grew closer, distorting it and leaving nothing but a /soggy/ and /worthless/ pile of sand.  
She felt like /that/. She felt like she had gotten /so close/ to being good, great even, she had almost reached it, before a tide got her. A tide designed to kill her, a tide she miraculously survived. It was horrendous, powerful, and she was horrified.  
Ever since the sandcastle she had built, she had decided that wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth spending all that time putting it together only for some element to destroy it.  
That’s how she felt.  
It wasn’t worth all the time of piecing herself together, only for it to get unraveled in seconds. The tide was her head, was whatever the Capitol did to her head. She was even /weaker/ than a grain of sand pushed by nature, she couldn’t go on to serve a purpose, be molded into something new. She was weak, useless, mad Annie Cresta.  
God she wishes she was mad, angry mad, not their crazy mad. She wishes she could stand here, yell and kick and have such a fit a peacekeeper from the boardwalk is altered. Drag her to the Capitol for all she cares, she has no use here.  
Then she was reminded of the blood on her hands again, shoving them deeper in the sand, fisting her hands and feeling the warm damp sand, or was that blood too? God what wasn’t blood? What had she done?  
She stared at the golden sand, which started to all turn red itself. The /beach/ was blood. God. She was causing it all, she was only being swept away again by a tide. She was letting it take control of her, it was almost comforting to just let it, at least something had her so fully.  
She couldn’t move her hands, only hope that the real tide could get close enough to take her away. She could drown, she /wanted/ to drown. To be gone, finally consumed by the sea like she should’ve been years ago. That felt like the only death appropriate for her. She had learned to swim because she couldn’t drown, she didn’t drown because she had learned to swim, now she’d like it to kill her. She could be free of all this blood if she was dead.  
“Annalisa!” Her name reaches her finally, although from the sound of things it was being called for a long time. It was frail, but there, stronger than her at least. She turned her head, in the distance she saw Mags.  
She couldn’t come onto the beach, not with her cane, and Annie knew that pained her. She knew Mags hated it when she ran off alone, she knew Mags saw her as delicate as everyone else did. It was /fair/, how could she not be? She was crying now over blood in the sand, that was pathetic.  
She pulled her hands out, looking at them in disbelief. Clean, a little sand, but clean. She had no blood on her. She nodded to herself, standing shakily before starting towards Mags.  
Mags had sat on her porch swing, where she had been this whole time Annie was sure. Her house was the closest to the beach, she was the oldest victor in Panem, she had the best house they could give her. Finally Annie reached her, sitting beside her before hugging the old woman.  
Immediately she was crumbling, immediately she was shaking with her sobs. But there was no blood, she heard Mags tell her so. “It’s not real, my little Annie,” she whispered, only she could hear it. “You’re safe here, it’s not real,”  
Annie and Finnick had recently started this game of sorts. It was simple, she wasn’t “real or not real” and Finnick answered, sometimes elaborating if necessary. Mags had quickly picked up on it too, and now adopted them same language when calming her down. She wondered what it was about the words that pulled her to be present. But they worked, they were the best anchor she had.  
“It’s not real,” Annie replies back meekly, maybe minutes after Mags had spoken, she hoped only seconds. She heard encouraging little sounds, felt a kiss on her head.  
Mags was feeble, but she had her. Mags understood the atrocities she saw better than anyone, even Finnick, having suffered from her own hallucinations. Nothing like Annie’s, Annie had described it, how sometimes she sees her district partner’s bloodied body, how sometimes there’s just blood. Mags weren’t like that, they were her old family, heartbreakingly kind, making the old woman long for them. Annie had asked once how she got through it, Mags told her because Finnick and her were her family now.  
Some family they were.  
But Mags always put them first, how you hear mothers do. She had fought for Finnick, Annie was sure, and she fought for her too. She was there to calm Finnick down, and now Annie as well. She held her, brushed a hand through her hand soothingly, singing her an old song for the sea.  
Annie hated putting things back together that were doomed to break again, but Mags’ gentle hands and voice slowly brought her some peace. Slowly made her feel /okay/ again. She still didn’t move even when she did, not off of Mags at least. She had instead moved to lay down on the swing, her head in Mags’ lap.  
The swing rocked, Mags sang, and this was how the sea was supposed to feel.


End file.
